VP candidate Walz starts two-state swing in Macon

Caption

Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks Sept. 17, 2024, in a Democratic Party campaign office in Macon, Ga.

Credit: Grant Blankenship / GPB News

Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz kicked off a campaign swing through two battleground states — Georgia and North Carolina — in Macon Tuesday.  

In the first of two stops. the Democrat spoke to local Democratic Party volunteers who were working the phones for the campaign. There he condemned the second thwarted attempt on the life of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

“I am grateful that the president is safe,” Walz began. “And I think all of us know: We don't solve our differences in this country with violence. We condemn it in all its forms. We solve our differences at the ballot box. That's how we get this done.” 

Walz also told the volunteers that, once again, the path to the presidency runs through Georgia, a fact about which the state should feel privileged and that the race is about three basic principles. 

“The sanctity of our vote; the idea of women having their own reproductive freedoms,” Walz said, naming the first two, “and the idea that every child should be free to go to school without worrying about being shot dead.”

The last was a reference to the Sept. 4 shootings at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.

Walz challenged his Republican opponent J.D. Vance’s recent statement that such school shootings are, quote, “a fact of life.“

“That is not just a fact of life, people,” Walz said. "That is not just a fact of life. And Donald Trump would know. This violence across the country has got to end.”

Later, at H&H Soul Food, Walz stumped less and shook more hands, with a select group of local Democratic Party members but also union members, some of whom just left the picket line against AT&T. For lunch, he ordered the Allman Brothers-inspired special, The Midnight Rider chicken biscuit. 

And he reiterated a point he made at the call center, which he attributed twice to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris: The mark of a leader is not who they can push down, but who they can lift up.